Managing a large IT project with a systems integrator (SI) is like building a house with the help of a contractor. No matter how good the contractor is or how much research you’ve put into selecting the right one, constant communication is key to finding a common ground between your original plans, the materials available, and the adjustments you want to make as the project moves forward.

“As the house is getting built,” says Greg Brown, a manager with Black & Veatch, “you may say, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize that the sun was that bad in those windows, or that color is going to be awful for that room.’” A good contractor can adjust the plans to tailor the house more to your liking.

Similarly, if you have a healthy relationship with your SI, you’ll be able to work together to adjust the contract and planning to allow for the new request while keeping the project going and tempers calm.

The more you connect with your SI from the beginning, Brown says, the greater the chance of success in your project. “Make sure you get to know your SI. Understand their culture, their motivation, their work ethics, everything — but first make sure you know yours,” he says.

Brown has been witness to both good and bad vendor relationships, and has amassed advice for companies looking to bring in an implementation partner. He shares five best practices for building a healthy relationship with your SI from day one.

1. Prepare for the Upcoming SI Relationship

Preparation is central to ensuring your vendor relationship starts off on the right foot. Brown recommends compiling all available documentation related to your project management office (PMO), such as templates and schedules, to use as training material for your vendor. The clearer picture your incoming vendor has of your processes and procedures the faster they can become acclimated to your project. Brown recommends compiling the following information to best prepare your implementation partner:

• Create a glossary of terms specific to your project and organization: In the world of SAP terminology, naming conventions and software nicknames vary greatly within industries and even across companies. Create a detailed list of the terminology your organization uses for your SI, who may have a lot of experience with implementations but not much experience in your specific industry. “Preparing them to get into your lingo will help accelerate how you can engage with them,” says Brown.
• Be specific about your expectations: Communicate what your exact expectations are with your vendor so specific requests are not lost in translation. Brown has seen a word as simple as “done” mean different things to different people. “An example would be like your piece of code,” says Brown. “A vendor may consider ‘done’ to be when they turn it over to your test team, but really it’s ‘done-done’ when it’s tested and accepted by you.” Brown also mentions that these should be defined in items such as your contract and statement of work.
• Relay all your major milestones: Keep your SI in the loop about your reporting schedule and major milestones you’ve communicated to your stakeholders. Brown believes this is an effective motivator for guiding your vendor and keeping them on track as they should have objective deliverables to report for each milestone. Additionally, Brown says encouraging your SI to see the project outside of just the software will help them understand the “big picture.”

In addition to these areas, be exhaustive when creating your vendor contract, Brown says, detailing deliverables, expectations, key performance indicator (KPI) information, expected benefits, and processes surrounding change requests and possible changes to scope, schedule, and cost.

“Ultimately,” says Brown, “you want your PMO to be able to clearly define the expected deliverables and schedules to your vendor. If that doesn’t happen, they’re just going to do their modus operandi, which may not be in synch with what you have or expecting.”

2. Perform a Thorough Gap Analysis

Before you bring in your SI, complete a thorough gap analysis to determine what areas of your organization or solution have gaps in understanding, vision, or even resources as these are things need to be addressed or could be filled in by your SI. A mature PMO is key to executing this analysis. If your organization doesn’t have a PMO, Brown says, a vendor management company or implementation partner can provide you the necessary resources. Additionally, when your SI becomes engaged with your project they should do a similar gap analysis to match requirements to the solution and how each will be filled. “Gap analysis should all be done early on before the request for proposals is even created and continually done throughout the entire project,” says Brown.

When executing your gap analysis, Brown encourages taking the whole organization into consideration, not just the resources and processes that are directly affected with the project at hand. Consult with a diverse group of subject matter experts (SMEs) — such as engineering, call center, back office, and technical staff — as early as possible to learn about their involvement with the current process and how it could be improved. Lines of communications with any areas of the business that may be affected by your implementation should be left open to address any potential issues early on in the process or as soon as they arise.

Changes can and do occur during a project, often later than they should due to lack of proper engagement of the appropriate business unit and subject matter experts, says Brown. This can be avoided by engaging the SMEs not only on what they do now, but on the future direction of the system and potential challenges the SMEs will face. Late change requests can add risk and cost to your project and can easily be mitigated early on with proper engagement.

Lastly, during the analysis look at your change management process to ensure it is strong enough to roll out, communicate, and train the new implementation. A rigorous gap analysis not only looks at every process that will be affected by the implementation, but also ensures that the rest of the processes will not be affected. By doing this, you will have a higher level of confidence that you won’t introduce any risks that should have been caught early on or unexpectedly affect out-of-scope items.

3. Bring in a Second Vendor

When a company is new to vendor relationships or has an especially tough project planned, Brown suggests using a second vendor who specializes in SI selection and management to facilitate and advise you with your project. Bringing in this second vendor can help you see what you have in house already, explain your company and culture to your vendor, and create a vision and process plan that is clear to all parties involved.

This vendor should be brought in at the beginning of the project and used through post-implementation until the project has been stabilized, he says. Once the project enters normal product support, the work of the implementation partner can be transferred to someone within your organization.

Having this second vendor offers a unique benefit as it adds a buffer between you and your SI and helps alleviate the stresses and breakdowns of communication that typically occur between two organizations. Relationships can be difficult and a second vendor may “understand and represent the goals of both sides, what the grand vision is, and how to manage keeping both groups working toward that vision,” Brown says.

Depending on the additional responsibilities you give this second vendor, they may not be a part of day-to-day tasks. Brown says this will actually help when you and your SI need to take a step back to view problems more fairly. When both sides are surrounded by the minute details of the project and squabbling over specifics, the vendor manager can take an objective higher-level view of the issue to help both sides see what really matters to the end goal.

4. Learn How to Work Together

When starting out a new vendor relationship, it can be difficult to know where the line is between under-using your vendor and creating tension through frequent requests and contact. “As you develop this relationship you’re going to learn where those limits are; they’re going to learn it with you, too,” says Brown. While a contract defines expectations and responsibilities, it’s the relationship you build with your SI that will enhance or inhibit both organizations in meeting those goals.

He encourages organizations to go into a new vendor relationship with flexibility and understanding while avoiding hostility and an us-versus-them mentality. Vendor relationships are usually long-term affair that can last many years when you take post-production support or future enhancements into account. Starting these relationships on the wrong foot can make your time together strained, or worse — cause the relationship to sever and leave you searching for a new SI before completion of the project.

“With any project, there are going to be problems and some things are going to have to give a little to be fair to both sides. Just keep the end goal in mind because that is most important,” says Brown. “Sometimes you’re just going to have to compromise.” While all of these are important, it’s best to understand whether quality, schedule, or cost is the primary focus. Brown suggests choosing one of those aspects and being willing to compromise on the other two. This way you will be better prepared to deal with issues and their impact on the big picture.

Brown emphasized that vendors want the project to be successful just as much as clients do. Talking through issues with your vendor rather than fighting to resolve a problem will provide you with a healthier and easier vendor relationship today, and a greater potential to work with that vendor on future endeavors.

Additionally, if you’ve communicated openly with your SI they’ll feel more comfortable being up front and honest with you if an issue arises, such as a late deliverable. Brown has seen situations in which a vendor didn’t report that a deliverable would be late until the day before it was due.

“Typically they know more than just the day before — they know much earlier. If you have that good relationship, they can just bring it up sooner so you can do what you need to — whether it’s adding more people to it, adding more to the budget, whatever it is you need to do to try to mitigate those risks,” he says.

To facilitate a good relationship with your vendor, learn as much as you can about their culture, processes, and work ethics. Brown says vendors can come from all over the world, so understanding their culture, and explaining yours to them, is a best practice for seamlessly merging teams. “Having that understanding between the teams will assist in building that team environment and contribute to both sides being able to predict work ethics, communication style, and their reactions to change,” he says.

5. “It’s All About the Relationships”

Once the groundwork for the vendor relationship has been laid, the most important area to focus on throughout the life cycle of your relationship is open communication with your SI. By doing this, Brown says you can avoid the most frequent issues that he sees arise at clients: those surrounding change management and potential risks.

When issues arise during the implementation that require a reevaluation of the process, a good change management process must be in place to process the issue and determine the best course of action to take. Part of that process must be a good relationship with your vendor so issues can be communicated easily and early. 

Brown emphasized that no matter how well planned your implementation is, things are always going to come up that involve some rework. “Keeping your vendor close and building a team environment provides the best environment for your project to accomplish your deliverables, quickly identify impacts, and work together to resolve them,” he says.

He warns that without that good connection, your relationship can become mechanical and filled with required check-ins without any great interest beyond the completion of the project. Even if the project isn’t running into any issues, having a relationship like this will prevent future success from being achieved because few people are invested in the project.  

Encourage your vendors to ask questions or raise risks when they think that something may be amiss. “Too many times a risk is realized but not effectively communicated before it became an issue that could have been resolved if it had been handled promptly,” says Brown.

He goes on to say, “It’s all about the relationship. It’s how we encourage the behaviors of our teams, how we establish a good series of communications as well as a level playing field for how we communicate. Whether that’s contractual items, whether it’s metrics that we’re doing, it’s a very important thing to have a solid formal and informal process of dealing with your vendor.”

Laura Casasanto

Laura Casasanto is a technical editor who served as the managing editor of SCM Expert and Project Expert.

You may contact the author at lauracasasanto@gmail.com.

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